February 2022 - Shadow lockdowns and a chocolate delight

Date Posted:2 February 2022 

 

Tough times never last, but tough people do." - Robert H. Schuller

 

 

February 2022

Welcome to our subscriber newsletter.

Well, it’s certainly been a crazy start to the year – my guess it's at least 10 times more difficult than in the previous 2 years during this pandemic and with no specific lock-downs to contend with we are left scratching our heads wondering what the hell is going on and why is everything so damn hard ?.

You see, right now it’s a lot worse than any of the prior lock-downs. They call it a shadow lock-down and instead of affecting consumers, it’s strangling suppliers, tying them in knots, both operationally and financially.

Logistics, whether it’s local, domestic or global continues to be a complete nightmare and getting worse by the day.

There’s no staff/labor, trucks or vans and it reached peak insanity last month during the Omicron surge.

How did our economy become so crippled and why is it now we are all feeling this extreme pain ?

Most commentators are pointing to the lack of immigration due to borders being shut for almost 2 years but we think it’s the cumulative effect of compounding disruptions – a ripple building into a tsunami.

Shipping containers with 22 tons of raw coffee arriving from overseas are sitting in the hot, humid sun, baking and stewing whilst waiting 25+ days for an AQIS inspector to approve clearance – all the while precious raw coffee rapidly loses vital quality.

Since November our main broker suffered at least 1 container a month ruined with severe heat damage from trans-shipment ports. That’s 60 tons of good stuff gone bad.

It would not be exaggerating to declare the current challenges in the global coffee industry being the toughest in the last 50 years. Big call, but hell yeah it’s hard.

After hankering for 15 years to take a decent break, I can't stop dreaming about having the rest of this year off to skip this ridiculous pain from surging out-of-control price rises, no stock and impossible logistics.

Over the last few weeks, many customers have asked us “why is Sendle not available”. Well, that's a good question and fair enough given 66% of our customers pick Sendle in the checkout.

The short answer is that with so many drivers “off the road isolating with Omicron” the service was failing badly, or I should say “falling apart”.

To put this into perspective, Sendle is a federation of small, independent operators, so when a driver is “away”, they are not replaced by someone else – it’s not the same with Australia Post and their larger workforce. Even AusPost have been experiencing problems with a shortage of drivers during January they could not collect parcels from retailers.

December is well known as the worst time of year for parcel incidents and true to form we experienced pain on another level from Sendle deliveries going pear-shaped – parcels taking 6 weeks to arrive or completely disappearing into thin air. Whilst Australia did not have the January bush fires, we certainly burnt ourselves the entire month trying to fix delivery issues.

Sendle lost their mojo in December and January which was disappointing considering their excellent performance throughout the earlier parts of 2021. In many cases Sendle deliveries were more than twice as fast as AusPost, but currently it's not possible to predict the performance from any of the shippers.

Over the last 5 weeks, Sendle collections from our facility were not occurring as planned each day -  leaving parcels stranded. The only sensible response in those circumstances is to protect our customers by “toggling” Sendle on and off based upon our assessment of “safety and success”.

We are trying our best to look after our customers and ensure deliveries succeed – the care goes well beyond running fast to pick, pack and send your order promptly. When something goes wrong, every incident costs us a lot in time and $$ along with the potential for reputational damage, so it’s always best to avoid or prevent issues and if you see Sendle disappear, now you will know why.

It's available at the moment, but that may change at any time.

Now the good news – Secret Label is back baby and wowsa it’s a cracker.

We have picked the top lots of our favorite origins and paired them together for a special treat.

Fruit-driven sweetness enrobed in a delicious dark chocolate coating. Part Violet Crumble, part chocolate bar, this complex coffee has enchanting notes to keep you interested and coming back for more.
 

 

February Secret Label

Tempted ?

Well, it's all that and more. A coffee with amazing flavor and that irresistible dark chocolate finish.

Secret Label is back and it's romping out of the gates for it's first outing of the year.

A luxurious experience, rich and complex with deep complexity and that trademark mycuppa clean, syrupy finish.

Salted caramel, toffee, honeycomb, tropical fruit sweetness and yep, let's say it again......dark chocolate coating.

This coffee will fly out the door - it may not last the month. With coffee prices at an all-time high, it's a steal.

For a limited time only - don't miss out.

Grab it here - **** Sorry, all sold out ****